battles

Current mood: drained
Category: Music

last night I went to see the band that's been playing on my page for the past several weeks. battles is a group that is made up of some fairly recognizable musicians. drummer john stanier is a founding member of the band helmet. guitarist and keyboardist ian williams is a veteran of the pittsburgh rock scene and former member of don caballero. tyondai braxton, son of jazz musician anthony braxton, creates live on stage samples with his vocals while playing guitar and keyboards. former lynx (?) guitarist and bassist dave konopka rounds out the quartet.

my friend john and I went to the record bar in westport to see this group. a crowd larger than expected showed up and formed a fairly large line outside to get in. I think it was an 18+ show and attracted a few more people. we sort of hung back during the first band. during the next band's set, we moved a little closer to the stage to get in position for the headliner.

i haven't been in a fight for about seven years. last night on the way back from the restroom, someone took issue with me moving back to my spot, so he tried to physically block me from walking past him. my attitude has always been if at a show and you have now desire to claim my spot and move up and you wish to "hang back" then get out of my way when I'm headed back to where my friend(s) are at. he asked if I was going to be a dick, and I said yes. I sort of muscled my way around him. then I heard his voice behind me saying "fag!" very creative.

the unfortunate thing about last night is that the two opening acts took a little too much time on stage. by the time battles hit the stage to play, it was already 12:30. the problem with this is that the record bar has a closing time of 1:30, so we only got to see them for an hour.

the show itself was excellent and the members are extremely proficient at the music they play. if you've listened to any of their recorded material you would know that it would seem like a difficult task to perform this music live. they pulled it off in a big way. stanier was able to keep all the looping and sampling together in time and reminded me why he is one of the best rock drummers you don't know anything about.

battles are also a band that is not fond of people going too nuts at their shows, even though their music is very energetic. a few fellows in the crowd were sort of losing their minds and ended up pissing a lot of people off. I can sort of understand not wanting to be shoved around at a show and wanting to just enjoy the music and live performance. then again it sort of left me wondering if any of these people had been to a show where you had to protect yourself up front. I don't really think so. this caught the attention of braxton and prompted him to stop the show and call the kids out and tell them to calm down. to me, there is nothing worse than the band stopping and telling you specifically to relax.

all in all, it was one of the best shows I've been to all year and I'd love to see them again when the come back around. hopefully next time they'll get to play for longer than an hour. they even turned on the houselights before they were done playing.

this may be the most simplistic writing from me in a long time.

Currently listening : Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? By Of Montreal Release date: 23 January, 2007